sharpening and noise reduction

[sedwards]

how do you guys go about this ? i can get the white balance and contrast just the way i want it but i have yet to improve any pic through sharpening. i know i cant make an ify picture great but i think i should be able to make it a little better. ive watched a few online videos but im just not getting it.

[sedwards]

i also should have asked , should i be processing images in photoshop cs6 or lightroom 4.4 ?

[Joel Eade]

how do you guys go about this ? i can get the white balance and contrast just the way i want it but i have yet to improve any pic through sharpening. i know i cant make an ify picture great but i think i should be able to make it a little better. ive watched a few online videos but im just not getting it.

You should always strive, through good exposure technique and good technique to stabilize your camera in the field, to get images sharp in camera prior to processing. Sharpening has it's limits and cannot fix an out of focus or blurred image due to subject motion or camera motion. When sharpening is over done it adds excessive noise and artifact to an image so be careful: less is more.

That being said....it's all about workflow and there are a myriad of ways to process an image but most people will start cropping if needed, then I will often use a very very light noise reduction. After that any color correction, shadows, highlights adjustment, dodging or burning etc.... I save sharpening for the last step. There are many methods but the unsharp mask can be very effective. The key to using it is to make very small adjustments and repeat 2 or 3 times if needed. Try these settings: Amount 355% Radius 0.2 Threshold 4 Again you may benefit from doing that 2 or 3 times on the final image. It provides a subtle effect and usually only helps if the image is pretty sharp to begin with. If you Google "sharpening methods in photoshop" you will find a lot of information on many techniques. There are some nice plugins that do the job as well....Topaz In-Focus works very well. Nik Sharpener Pro is very nice too.

[Dave Throgmartin]

I'm uncomfortable sharpening in LR4 so far so I usually sharpen JPGs in Photoshop Elements 10 with settings 85, 1, 4. It appears to work for most photos. I haven't seen it cause haloing, etc...

Anyone have any LR4 or LR5 sharpening tips?

Dave

[DavidEccleston]

I change sharpening techniques fairly often, apparently. This is my current process (I use Elements).

Crop/Level, White Balance if needed, Adjust exposure sliders.

Usually a touch of contrast and clarity. I don't overdo these as I have a later tweaking step I prefer.

I add Luma Noise Reduction, mainly based on ISO/Camera combo (1Ds needs less than 7D). ISO 1600 needs somewhere around 20. If I see detail being dropped by the noise reduction (rare), I'll drop the slider down (by 5 or so) and reduce the noise later. On 7D, at higher ISOs (800, 1600), I may increase the chroma slider. I don't touch the sharpening or detail sliders here.

Once in the editor proper, it depends on what I'm doing.

For web, I resize to 900 high. I no longer choose 'resize sharper'. For images for sale, I keep full res. 900 is because that's about the maximum that fits in a maximized Windows Picture Viewer window, and it does a terrible job of re-sizing images for display, so this keeps things crisp. For 16x9 crops I'll often do 1920x1080, so I can use it as a desktop background.

If there is more noise than I'd like, I do Filter/Reduce Noise, at a level of 2 or 3. Sometimes more. I have used 7, 8, and 9, but 95% of shots I use 2 or 3. I have the chroma slider at something like 25%, but I pretty much ignore that slider as the 1Ds2 + Camera RAW don't let much color noise through, and leaving it at 25% doesn't seem to affect anything negatively.

Next I use Unsharp Mask. I use it at around 15, 0.9, 0.

Next, for extra contrast/punch/shadow boost/highlight lowering/whatever, I do 'duplicate layer', set the top layer to blending mode 'overlay', then Adjust Lighting/Levels. On the bottom control I bring up the shadows and bring down the highlights until it's vagely what I want. Sometimes the two levels are far apart, sometimes they're really close... there is no standard. Next I adjust the top slider's middle control. This controls whether I'm in a boost-shadow or drop-highlight mode, often followed by a final tweak on the lower control's range. When done I click the layer eye to see before/after. On the occasions when I think the effect is over-done I may drop the layer opacity down.

Occasionally I still use a 3rd party (free) curves plugin that gives you proper curve controls, and adjust them per channel for a cross processed effect, or boost shadows, etc.

On some dog shots I'll also add in a 'brightness' adjustment layer, delete the default mask, then re-add a mask that hides everything, then, on the mask, paint in the eyes. Dogs often have very dark eyes which can ruin an otherwise perfect shot. I seem to recall having to do this after flattening the overlay step, otherwise the adjustment just adjusts the very-bland overlay layer, or the overlay layer only affects the eye mask, neither of which is what I want. In proper Photoshop you can probably group the layers then add the eye-brightening layer over top of the group, but I don't know for sure.

[M_Six]

I open RAW files in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). I set the sharpening slider to 67 and adjust from there, although usually not much. Under the sharpening slider is a masking slider. If you hold down the ALT key (Mac: Option Key) as you move that slider the image turns black with white showing the areas that will receive sharpening. I adjust it so just the outlines of objects get sharpened. If I need to use NR, the slider is also on that tab. I rarely go past 40 on that and usually I'm well below 40. Shooting to the right gives you more signal-to-noise and allows you to then reduce exposure in ACR, which cleans up a lot of noise.

In Photoshop I duplicate the image layer, change the blend mode of the duplicated layer to Soft Light and then apply a ~10 pixel High Pass filter. I'll mask that layer and paint in just the areas I want sharpened. (Technically it's not sharpening, it's just raising micro-contrast.) This works well for critters and architecture. It *does not* work well for portraits unless you like seeing every detail of a person's skin.

[sedwards]

well ive read all your responses and i really appreciate them very much. i opened photoshop to see if i could get any of that to work. well im pretty sure im gonna need to take a class for it lol. i am totally lost in photoshop lol. ill just stick to lightroom for now.